Search Of Volusia Lake Yields Clues To Theft, Missing Teen

Divers Found Stolen Tools Near The Spot Where The Youth's Wallet Was Found. Investigators Suspect A Link.

November 3, 1993|By Blake Fontenay of The Sentinel Staff

DELAND — Volusia County deputy sheriffs found clues Tuesday that may strengthen a link between the burglary of a state Department of Transportation compound and the disappearance of a Lake Helen teen-ager in June.

Members of the sheriff's scuba diving team found several tools stolen from a DOT complex on Kepler Road while searching a nearby lake where the missing teen's wallet was found Sunday, sheriff's spokeswoman Cheryl Downs said.

The dive team plans to resume its search today for more clues to the June 25 disappearance of Timothy Lassiter, 18.

Lassiter's parents reported the teen missing after he failed to return home from a trip to Club Europe, a DeLand nightclub. The boy's bloodstained car was recovered from the parking lot of an abandoned shopping center in south DeLand the next day.

In August, according to investigators, a burglary suspect told them Lassiter was an accomplice in a break-in at the DOT complex on Kepler Road.

Jay John Hale, 19, of Auburndale was arrested in Polk County on Aug. 4 in connection with the burglary, which occurred the day before Lassiter disappeared.

A 12-year-old boy fishing at Cypress Lake - a short distance from the DOT complex - found a wallet containing Lassiter's identification Sunday, Downs said.

On Tuesday, divers searching the lake bottom found a $300 pipe-cutting tool and small tools that were identified from serial numbers as being among the items taken from the DOT complex, Downs said.

Searchers think Lassiter's body could be in the 10-acre lake just southeast of DeLand Municipal Airport, Downs said.

''That's why they are there,'' Downs said of searchers. ''Plus, they're looking for anything else.''